


Ask, and I Shall Deliver

by plingo_kat



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, M/M, Multi, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-24
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-19 09:09:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plingo_kat/pseuds/plingo_kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt fic. You know the drill.</p><p>Give me more prompts <a href="http://pushthequorumbutton.tumblr.com/ask">here.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Abstract

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> arishoking asked for: 00q, more art gallery visits! Ooor 00q, Bond is a little put off when he’s handed an umbrella gun. OR BOTH.
> 
> I chose both.

“This is even worse than last time.” Bond stands, stoically miserable in front of Q’s chosen piece, feet shoulder width apart and hands clasped behind his back. _”Squares_ , Q. I’ve been staring at squares for ten bloody minutes.”

“It’s an exploration of space, Bond. Do at least try to pretend you have an understanding of modern art.”

“Perhaps if it were at least pretty,” Bond says. “Do you have my equipment?”

“Will people ever stop asking stupid questions?” Q sighs. He hands over an envelope. “Identification and plane tickets. A voucher for money – do try not to spend too much.”

Bond slides the paper into his inner jacket pocket.

“Weaponry,” Q continues, presenting the now expected plain black box. “Walther, customized to your palm print, you know the drill. Subcutaneous transmitter this time, in the fleshy part of the hip. M assures me you know how to inject yourself. I will of course be checking up on that later. Ah, and this.”

Bond’s eyes flick down to Q’s hands, which are holding a plain black umbrella; the handle is shaped to look like the butt of a rifle. He raises a single eyebrow.

“They’re quite popular now,” Q says. “And if you haven’t noticed, it’s pouring outside.”

“I’m not afraid to get a little wet, Q,” Bond drawls.

“It shoots lasers,” Q says.

Bond blinks. “Lasers.”

“Well you’re always asking me for explosives,” Q says. “But considering how you are with those, I decided that something more… precise would be prudent.”

“How does it work?” Bond levels the point of the closed umbrella at the art installation. His hand wraps around the fake rifle butt, finger on the trigger.

“No, don’t—“

There is no dramatic buzzing or light-saber noise, nor an explosion; a line of canvas and wall merely ceases to exist, burned clean away by the beam of bright blue light.

“Shit!” Bond drops the umbrella to a more neutral position by his side and seizes Q by the arm, dragging him away from the scene of the crime.

“I _told_ you—“ Q mutters, ducking his head down. People have started screaming.

“So you did,” Bond admits. “Perhaps I’ll have to start listening to you.”

“Please do,” Q says.


	2. Five Times Bond Hugged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The request: orgy fics if possible - if not hugging fics are good as well.
> 
> I wanted to do the orgy fic, but then I realized that there would be SO MANY LIMBS and gave up. So! Have hugs instead!

**one**  
“Gunmen at two, eight o’clock,” Bond whispers in Eve’s ear. He slides a hand along her waist and kisses her cheek. Eve grasps his wrist when his hand moves lower. 

“Now, Bond,” she says, giving him what others will see as a flirty look through lowered lashes. “Keep that up and I might just shoot you instead of them.”

“I quake in fear,” Bond says, and pulls away slowly in a show of reluctance.

“You’d better,” Eve murmurs.

 

 **two**  
He rocks her body for long minutes, eyes burning. No tears fall.

Before rigor mortis sets in, he lays her out gently on the floor and crosses her arms over her chest; peaceful but disapproving as ever.

“Goodbye, ma’am,” he says.

 

 **three**  
“Get down!” He tackles Mallory (still not M, never M in his head) and sends them both sprawling to the floor, elbows and knees and shoulders bruising, before the world erupts in sound and fire. They end up pulling guns from each others’ holsters, Bond sitting back on his heels above Mallory’s knees and Mallory shooting from a supine position on the floor.

Together they kill four people before there’s a lull in the chaos and they can roll for cover.

“Sorry for the rough treatment, sir,” Bond says, slotting another magazine into his pistol.

“Not at all, Bond.”

They rise as one, guns at the ready.

 

 **four**  
“Here, no—look, you’ve got it all wrong, just let me do it.”

Bond rolls his eyes. “It’s a shoulder holster, it shouldn’t have to be so bloody complicated.”

“This _shoulder holster_ contains eight pounds of explosives, a garrote wire, enough of a parachute to allow you to survive a two hundred foot fall, and a zipline.”

“It’s a piece of equipment whose main function is to hold my gun.”

Q sniffs. “You were the one complaining about not having enough gadgets. Raise your arms.”

Bond raises them. Q reaches around to buckle _something_ ; his chin is hooked over Bond’s shoulder, their chests flush. “Who designs a fastening in the back? I’m disappointed in you, Q.”

“Shut up,” Q says, and tightens a strap with a vicious jerk. Bond carefully doesn’t flinch.

“Oh,” Bond says.

“What?” Q looks around just in time to catch the tail end of a coat and somebody’s heels as they shut the door. “Oh, for—“

“How long do you think it’ll take the rumors to spread?” Bond asks idly. “Five quid that it’ll reach M by lunchtime.”

“I will find a way to make your life miserable,” Q promises.

 

 **five**  
“I do hope this isn’t becoming a habit,” Tanner greets him when he gets back from the dead _again_. This time it’s because of an explosion that took out nearly half a city block. James spent two months regaining the use of his right side, and he’ll need reconstructive surgery for the burned skin of his torso.

“Good to see you too, Tanner,” he says. They clasp hands. On an impulse Bond pulls him closer to wrap an arm around his shoulders; the last two months haven’t been kind, and he’s had time to recall Silva and M (the previous M, Bond’s first, the one he loved). Tanner was one of the closest to her, and his steady presence is both a reminder and a comfort.

Tanner pats him gingerly on the back. Bond appreciates his restraint, since his skin is still tender.

“Welcome back, 007.”


	3. Rumor Has It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An absolute lovely anon asked for "the 00Q rumors from the 5 times hug fic?" And I love me some rumors, so.

_No,_ Dave mouths, practically running out of the room, shaking his head and drawing his hand across his throat.

“What?” 

“They’re hugging or something, I didn’t stay to check!” Dave looks like he’s had a bunch of static shocks; his hair is standing on end. His eyes are wild. “007 can’t kill me for this, right? It was an honest accident.”

Nobody seems sympathetic to his pain. 

“Hugging?” Alex says. “Is that it?”

“Isn’t it enough?” Lil says. She places a hand on her blouse, over her heart. “Our Q finally finding love in the rugged arms of the emotionally damaged 007, who finally breaks free of his protective shell…”

“Somebody’s been reading too many romance novels,” Alex says dryly.

“Can we focus, here?” Dave asks, desperate. “How do I know Bond isn’t going to not-very-subtly break my arm when he next sees me?”

“We don’t,” Alex says. “Now—who wants to start a pool on when they’re going to kiss in HQ?”

 

The pool is started and spreads through Q-branch into the managerial staff by lunchtime.

“Put me down for after Bond’s next mission,” Eve says. She takes a sip of her tea; Q-branch has entrenched themselves in the break room, where neither Q nor Bond ever venture, to serve as a base for The Pool. “The first time they see each other in private.”

“After minor but non-life threatening injury,” Tanner says. Then he brings up a hand to his ear. “What? No, it’s the blue wire…”

“Get back to work,” says M. “And have me down on Christmas, will you?”

 

“A bloody office pool,” Q laments. “When did my life become a bad sitcom?”

“I put us down for New Years,” Bond says.

“What? Did you make it through Moneypenny?”

“No, one of yours, actually. The brunette, with the fingerless gloves?”

Q narrows his eyes. “Alex? You’ve turned her? What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Bond says, slouching back against the wall. 

“You promised to send her topless photos, didn’t you.”

“I’m not saying anything.”


	4. hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> leann827 asked for: M/bond? :)
> 
> And then my brain decided to run away with the idea.

He finds himself watching Mallory’s hands. He _stares_ , really, for much longer than is polite; past the point where it could be considered even remotely acceptable.

 

She is inscrutable. When James is called to her office, he stands until he is bidden to sit; keeps his spine straight until she makes a cutting remark, and then slouches with as much insolence as he can muster. Her fingers are often laced together in a loose clasp on her cleared desk.

Faint traceries of blue veins run below her skin. Her nails are neat and short, covered in clear lacquer.

She has gun calluses fading, fading away into obscurity.

 

Mallory wears braces with wide straps; James can see them if he looks hard enough, and if Mallory sits at the right angle. He also favours highwaisted trousers.

“Bond,” he says sharply when he catches James’ eyes drifting downwards, and James jolts.

He almost sounded like her, for a moment.

 

James catalogues which garments reflect what moods. She doesn’t make it easy, because predictability is vulnerability and anybody in the trade who lives long enough to get to her position excises their soft spots carefully, cuts them out and scars them over, learns to hide the places that are still tender.

Still. She always wears sensible shoes but swaps out for boots when feeling particularly acerbic, a heavier coat when stressed, pearl eardrops normally but turquoise on days where she starts out in a good mood.

She is always beautiful.

 

Sometimes Mallory will cross his legs a certain way, or tighten his mouth in a frown, or steeple his fingers, and James’ breath will be knocked out of him in a rush.

He grips his wrist with one hand, the other in a fist, both behind his back in parade rest.

 

He holds open doors for her when he can. She doesn’t often tolerate it, deliberately stepping on his feet or glaring as she walks by; he keeps his mouth serious and smirks at her with his eyes. It’s a game they play, one James can never win. He doesn’t mind.

 

Mallory’s office is a room full of ghosts. _There_ is where M’s stupid English bulldog isn’t; _there_ is the time James stood bleeding for a full ten minutes before M finally called him out about it; _there_ is the time she asked him—

“Just what are you staring at, Bond?”

James blinks.

 

History repeats. Silva was James’ dark shadow, but he was Tiago before he was Silva and James is the new Tiago, the new-new ticking time bomb of predatory instincts and love so intense it manifests more as obsession. James never got to touch M, to see to the core of her; he breached her home and unearthed her name and inherited her love of country, but in the end she died in his arms a stranger, as far away from him as his own parents, lost to the mists of time and memory.

 

“M,” James says, savouring the name. “Sir.”

“Very good, 007,” Mallory says drily, and James hides a shiver.

 _This time_ , he thinks: half regret, half anticipation. _This time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was intended to be more explicitly Mallory/Bond, but it didn't turn out that way. James has a strange relationship with Ms and England. I tried to articulate my take on it with this fic, but I don't know if it came across properly? I'll probably toy with the theme more in the future.
> 
> Title is taken from the same poem Dench!M quoted in the movie, _Ulysses_ by Alfred Lord Tennyson.


End file.
